Reaching out
by Mage-Alia
Summary: When one story ends another begins. Shepard finds herself sitting against a bolder, dying as she stares up at an unfamiliar sky...


Disclaimer: There's no world where I'd own either of these titles... well, statistically in the multiverse there might be one... but for now I'm just playing in their sandbox.

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Reaching out.

by Mage-Alia

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Summary: When one story ends another begins. Shepard finds herself sitting against a bolder, dying as she stares up at an unfamiliar sky...

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She wasn't on earth.

Shepard lay, reclined against a large stone, uncertain about how she'd come to be there.

Her last memory had been of The Citadel. The Conduit. The Catalyst. How many had died in the scant hours of war and fire that had been their last stand, the battle to take back Planet Earth from the Reapers... She'd destroyed them. Given a choice that grated on her. She'd destroyed them all, they'd tried to fool her into choosing indoctrination, into allowing them control of not just her, but also the people... but her outrage had won. The fire that had been reduced to an ember by the trials she'd had to face surged back into life as she realised at the last moment what was so wrong.

It had been Anderson's gun in her hand as she plunged the galaxy back into a new age of isolation.

But none of that mattered anymore.

All that mattered was the alien night time sky above and the warm earth below.

Fingers curled in the dirt, the only strength she had left and it wasn't used to fight, it wasn't used to struggle or cry for help... She could see a beautiful aurora of color in the distance, the outline of gigantic celestial bodies against the horizon and the glimmer of stations amid the blanket of stars. Below her was a farm, terraced into the side of a mountain and surrounded on all sides by sheer cliffs that sheltered it from the outside world. The end of the valley opened out to a sudden drop, flat round houses perched on the edge like great disks and beyond it was a panorama of mountains and valleys that stretched until they hit that magical sky...

In the depths of her mind, in that moment so still and silent, Shepard wondered if she wasn't already dead. She couldn't feel her body, she was numb in more ways than one. Nerves fried, her body hurt in such a way that the pain receptors had shut down. She'd often imagined herself, in places like this. Daydreams during the dark times that had carried her through the war. Going back to a colony, after what happened on Mindor had never seemed like an option... but these days she yearned for the quiet life that would come from being on the frontier alone.

It was almost amusing how she found her retirement plans before her right at the moment of her death.

It seemed appropriate.

She wasn't sure how long she'd been there, but the sky began to lighten in the distance and twinkling lights reflected off a distant river. The outlines of Satelite towers and wind farms she hadn't seen in the dark suddenly loomed against the mountain ridge and the sounds of stirring life started amid the buildings below.

Bathed in morning light she found herself welcoming the darkness. Spots blinked in her eyes and fell shut, a smile curling against her lips as she soaked in the warmth of her last day and let the rush of unconsciousness take her.

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"...Over here!..."

"...armour... military?..."

"...you...think she...?..."

"How... move...we?"

"...inside... - ...Call..."

"..."

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Awareness came back. Sharp, cold and sudden.

Hands on her shoulder pulled away sharply as the old woman that sat beside her in the dark realised she was awake. She couldn't see much, her vision was blurred, although she could make out shapes in the gloom. Blinking hard she fought to regain some level of awareness as new details filled themselves in.

Moonlight filtered through cracks in the blinds to reveal terrified people crouched around her bed. She heard the whimper of a child and the frantic movements of the mother that tried to lull it back to sleep. She pushed through the distractions, blocking them out one by one, trying to get her bearings, when she heard it.

The careful shuffle of something big trying to be stealthy. A grumbling murmur that didn't belong to any human passed at the very edge of her range and something chittered in alien tones that her universal translator couldn't hope to read.

 _\- and suddenly she was back on a colony world, her body smaller, weaker. Her mother staring back at her in the dark as something -_

A hand gripped hers, dispelling the flashback. She registered dimly that she wasn't wearing her gauntlets even as the old woman that had woken her pressed a finger to her lips in the dark.

Quiet.

Unlike that distant memory of her home world, Shepard didn't feel that crippling fear. Memories had less sting after the horrors of war, for all that they haunted her. The strange aliens still chittered in the distance and she took a breath.

In...

Out...

Something stung in her chest, her limbs on fire with the effort it took to move. She pulled her hand away from the woman, tugging the blanket over her head as she went, the omnitool was still on her hand and it glowed ember orange in the dark as she activated it. A holographic screen showed her the last blinking charge of medigel and she wanted to laugh, one last miracle. She'd sworn it was empty. With a long outward breath she activated the injector. It was broken, the needle in her armour going in at the wrong angle, but it delivered it's payload just fine as the cool pressure flowed under her skin.

Her breath caught and heaved in near silence as she dismissed the light gauntlet and pulled the blanket back down.

Every eye in the room was looking at her.

She pulled herself up, hands of the old woman coming to support her as she threw her legs over the side of the bed, her eyes on the door as she sagged into the woman's hold and waited.

The moonlit aliens traced hulking ghosts in black against the walls. The shuffling grew louder and the pointed tops of something moving just below the sills betrayed the presence of more. It was a long, tense few minutes as the creatures shuffled by. Light pattering footsteps, heavier lumbering falls. Nervous chittering and then the rearguard of thin, almost silent shapes. The worst had seemed to have passed them...

Then there was one.

A top heavy bulk loomed in the scant light and paused.

In the corner of the room, the baby felt the ratcheting tension as every soul present held their breaths and Shepard took a very slow, very measured breath...

In...

Out...

The baby whimpered.

Almost immediately the shadow came to attention, snapping round faster than any civilian could follow, but in Shepard's mind, she could see it move, she could see the impending fight, and the stillness she'd felt staring up at the alien sky gave way under an old familiar feeling. Her heart thundered like drums in her ears and she found a smile slowly pulling at her lips.

This...

Adrenaline increased, the medigel working fast as her muscles tensed.

Memories of another incident, another time flooded back, and it wasn't of her own mortality that she thought. She recalled another that had been resigned to death in the way she had been when she gunned open the conduit and the words came from her in a whisper, holding no meaning to the frightened people around her, but loud in the silence none the less.

"... Would have done experiments on the seashells."

The door gave way fast as the Alien threw itself toward the sound. Choked off screams of terror sounded in the night as the sharp orange glow burst into life, a nano blade flash forming almost as quickly as the snap hiss of plasma heralded the ignition of a forked blade. The alien lunged and she lurched up to meet him, sparks of energy lighting the room as she parried, throwing the opal shaded blade wide and with all the force she could muster, buried the omni blade in the beast's chest. It stopped, jarring her arm painfully, but she held firm, letting gravity do most of the work as she pulled upward, her blade burst from its shoulder and she honestly didn't have time to think of where it's heart might be... but few things could function without their head.

Gathering the last of her strength she slashed as hard as she could, her reinforced skeleton and implants doing all they could to help as the blade sheered through the armour of its neck.

Everything became still and quiet once more.

What had felt like an eternity while it happened had only been a few seconds of combat, but as the body slid down to the floor, the omni blade melting away into shards of light, Commander Jane Shepard felt more alive than she had in weeks. She stared at the people around her and they stared back, eyes wide and amazed even as the strength left her once more. Old gnarled hands found her again, easing her back to the cot even as the crash came fast, making her vision go black at the edges.

But this time her heart beat steady, her breathing easier.

She wasn't going to die here, not any time soon.

Not while there were still people in the galaxy who needed her.

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"HEY! HEY! WE SURRENDER! THERE ARE NO WEAPONS HERE!" Shouts woke her to a world of pain and she didn't even realise that the shouts had been in another language until someone asked for a translation. The chatter was distant as she relaxed, letting her body wake itself up, much more slowly than last time. She'd just managed to open her eyes when there was a noise of alarm.

"-they're saying, that there's a... an alien!?" A deep voice exclaimed and suddenly there was an armoured figure standing over her, hulking and massive in comparison to the armour profiles she was used to, they were clearly humanoid as they bent over so as to not hit their head on the ceiling. Their visor flicked to one side and did a double take that she was sure would have been comedic if he wasn't wearing a helmet and she wasn't hurting so much.

"Fuck!" The same deep voice cursed as the behemoth noticed the corpse of the alien that the farmers had pulled to the side. He had his weapon up and pointed at it even as it became evident that the thing was very, very dead. Another armoured soldier appeared in the door and cursed just as loudly.

"Covenant!"

Their attention snapped to her and she met their gaze through the visors.

She knew she looked like a mess, what was left of her armour was well beyond repair, but for all that she hurt, her implants and the lone shot of medigel had done wonders for her while she slept. Angry red lines traced her face where the skin broke, revealing the glow from inside her skull, but she was awake and moving under her own power. Standing a tad unsteadily she straightened and made a half-hearted marine's salute.

"Alliance systems Commander Jane Shepard. At your service." She introduced herself to the wary soldiers, painfully aware of the limited armour and weapons she owned. There was no recognition by anyone in the room at her name and something in her breathed a sigh at that. She already knew she was a long way away from home, the alien already confirmed that. "Got another gun handy?"

The old woman behind her began to chuckle as the two golden visors stared back far longer than was necessary.

Well it wasn't a farm on a distant world... nor was it seashells on a beach.

But space colonies, hostile aliens and Super soldiers?

She could handle that.

She could totally handle that.

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A/N: XD

So this one has been sitting around in my head for a very long time. I've just never had the... focus to write it out properly. As everyone knows, the ending of Mass Effect 3 was pretty shitty unless indoctrination theory was assumed as cannon. In all honesty I felt that the game couldn't have ended without somehow removing Shepard from the equation. The commander was always the driving force for everyone and in a world without Reapers I can imagine him/her being very lost after the fact. Moving Shepard on to another world and another battlefield felt like a much more fitting ending don't you think... ?

Either way, it's a oneshot for now and as usual, it may end up being crossposted to my Ao3 account under Auraion, so don't be surprised if it looks familiar. :P

Don't forget to review

Cya


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